That is an extremely broad question; can you narrow it down a bit?:

- What experience do you have with *NIX operating systems?

- What experience do you have programming for the various *NIX operating systems (Linux, BSD, etc.), and which would be your platform of choice?

- Are there any specific guidelines that you have to adhere to in terms of the final year's project's scope? That is- does the project demand that you focus on a certain thing such as a writing some type of device driver, a GUI applet, etc.?

I have just started studying unix.
i have very good knowledge of c,studied 386 architecture & programming in detail, also studied D.O.S device drivers.i want to do my project in core systems/kernel programming.
Actually i am new to unix i wanted to know some project ideas so that i can directly focus on those areas. Once i decide the project i can work on that specific area.

Thought about writing a device driver for Linux, perhaps?

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...73715?v=glance

This book has a really neat example of how you could write a kernel device interface to the system's memory. You could be really ambitious, and try to write a full-fledged device driver, or you could just write some kind of simple device driver to a serial device, or something. It sounds like you have enough interests there to get you started with some kind of project...